


Seek, Find

by argle_fraster



Category: Chrono Cross
Genre: M/M, Soldiers, unapologetic porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 08:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two people who aren't quite sure what they are doing, or what Fate has in store for them, seek something more tangible in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seek, Find

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to apologize for this, and then I was like you know what, no. I have had a rough week. I just spent my first Thanksgiving away from my family in another country. I've been sick for days, and sometimes you just need to write some hot dudes boning each other. And what is the internet for if not hot dudes boning each other? SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED IT.

"Sometimes I don't know if I'm really alive," Serge says, quietly, over the crackle and hiss of the fire they built just outside the Shadow Forest.

Glenn thinks of Dario; he thinks of Riddel's sad smiles, of his mother's tired wrinkles, of the ghosts that he thinks oft walk the halls of Viper Manor, searching for what they used to have in life. He wonders if maybe it wouldn't be better to sever the connection completely, rather than hold on, desperately, to a scrap of what had once been.

Pip has scampered off somewhere - the creature knows them by scent, most like, and will return when it is good and ready, but for now, it is just them and the low hum of the insects around them. Glenn is less sure of what he's doing now, in the darkness of the night. He can't discern why he's following a young man who should, by all rights, be dead and gone, and why it was so easy to let go of the tight tether of the Dragoons.

He wonders what Dario would think if he saw him now. He wonders, often, what Dario would do in his position - and usually, he can come up with no answer that satisfies his own morbid curiosity.

Serge, a hand span to Glenn's left, shrugs a bit. His hair is dark and knotted, clumped in his eyes. Perhaps it's been the least of his worries, existing as a ghost in this strange world.

"They say I died ten years ago," Serge says. "I guess I did. But even though I'm here now, even though I can see and touch and smell this world, too, it still feels like I'm ... not. In both, but part of neither."

How strange it must be to question one's very existence; the world around him must feel like a dream, a waking dream, a vision so vivid that it is simultaneously both believed and doubted.

Glenn knows that feeling. It's the same feeling he wakes to every day, the same feeling that has hung low and heavy around his shoulders since Dario's death, since Riddel's mourning, since the shroud of uncertainty, murky and deep, covered Viper Manor and all who live within it.

"There has to be a reason for your existence here," Glenn tells him.

Serge laughs, a bit, and it sounds decidedly joyless. "And what would that be? Lynx, when I saw him, he called me something. I don't know what it meant, but it sounded important."

The other man raises his head, meeting Glenn's gaze, and there are a thousand emotions there, playing beneath the surface of his features. "I'm not sure I'm ready to be important."

"You're no younger than I was, when I joined," Glenn offers. "And older still than many a man who has lay down his life for cause and country."

"But I'm not a soldier," Serge says. His eyes drop once more, to his hands, twisting in his lap like a nervous twitch. "I didn't choose this."

"Many men don't."

There's a moment of silence, and at the side of his vision, Glenn can see Serge lift his chin again.

"Why did you?" he asks. When Glenn looks at him in question, he clarifies, "Choose to be a soldier. Choose to live and die like this, by the sword. You act out the orders given to you, you don't make your own decisions."

"I made this one," Glenn replies. He feels infinitely heavy; it's his guilt, ensnaring his heart and keeping it low, throbbing with the knowledge of just what he's cast aside for this fool's errand.

Serge's eyes are wide. "Why?"

Glenn isn't sure how to put it in words. He can't explain why he chose to follow this boy, this almost-man, this strange, otherworldly human who feels like so, so much more. But there's a pull in his gut that tells him this is the right path, even when he's staring down the fork in the road and unable to see the end.

"Sometimes," Glenn tells him, low and quiet to even his own ears, "I'm not sure that I'm alive, either."

There is a long moment of nothing. Glenn stares at the fire, consumed by his own thoughts; they are a whirl of confusion, a ship swept out to sea without a guiding light. He has only just managed to steady his own breathing once more when he registers the movement at his side. Serge is there, with a hand poised near Glenn's face, fingers trembling. He seems suddenly unsure, paused mid-action, as if waiting for the signal that he will not be pushed away.

And Glenn isn't sure what to do, isn't sure how to react, not when he himself doesn't know what his own response would be.

Serge takes the silence as an affirmative to continue. His fingertips are cool when they touch Glenn's face, which is strange - they should be warmed by the fire. But they leave behind trails of something when they move across Glenn's cheek and jaw, tracing the outline, and there is a breath that shudders through Glenn's whole form them, looking at the way Serge pinches his bottom lip with his teeth when he is lost in nervous thought.

"I think you're alive," Serge says, and Glenn's body flares in agreement, thrumming with activity and heat and _sensation_. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, just to stem this, to stop it before it begins to spin wildly, madly out of control, and Serge steals whatever denial Glenn might have had by kissing him. It's lopsided and rushed, off-center in a way that just makes it feel that much more concrete, and as Glenn moans, as his body responds immediately with more fervor than he was prepared for, Serge's palm flattens against the side of his face.

There is something to the feel of it all. Something inherently real; as Serge kisses him, mouth coaxing Glenn's open to swipe inside, to lick his lips apart until he is coming undone by the somewhat uncoordinated but well-meaning heart of it all, there is something there - a fire, something he hasn't felt in a long time, since the Einlanzer was taken from Dario's lifeless hands.

They end up on the ground, a tangled mess of limbs and too much armor that clanks noisily against the other pieces. Serge's legs on are on either side of Glenn's waist. He's making noises, little gasps, breaths that seem both surprised and anxious, wanting and willing, the sounds of someone discovering the world for the first time and finding it to his liking.

Glenn should push him off, and finds he can't. Instead, he rolls them, feeling a root upturned and uneven beneath his legs as he finds the hem of Serge's tunic and tugs, up, over the other man's head. It comes free and takes Serge's necklace with it, and both are cast off, in the brush and the shadows of the tree.

It takes far longer to get Glenn's armor off, especially when Serge tries to keep their mouths fused together as they do it.

"Hinge," Glenn says, against Serge's lips, the sound half-lost when Serge swallows it down. "On the back, the clasp."

His breastplate falls free, and Glenn feels lighter. Serge's hands are roaming, seeking, searching out and mapping the expanse of Glenn's chest. By the fire, he looks both younger and older than he really is - maybe he truly is a ghost, caught between lifetimes that never even existed. But he feels real beneath Glenn's touch; real and solid, malleable, something that Glenn wants desperately to claim.

If Pip comes back now, Glenn hopes the creature has the good sense to give pause.

"Have you done this before?" Serge asks, breathless and laughing, when Glenn finds his jaw with his mouth and traces a line down the arc of it with his tongue. There is salt there, remnants of the battles they've fought. Glenn can taste the tang of his own sword, their shared victory.

"Once," he answers; if it is lost against Serge's collarbone, then so be it. There is something sacred about the bond between soldiers-in-arms. The code of brotherhood is sacred. Trust runs deep, and within it oft lies acceptance - these are the things that Glenn has learned within the Dragoons.

These are the lessons he can share with this young man whom he has heedlessly, recklessly followed.

Serge grabs for the loose ends of Glenn's hair, the bits that have come free from the cord and matted to the back of his neck. He tugs upwards, rough, demanding in the sort of way that Serge does without thinking. His response, if there is one buried there, comes in the form of another searing kiss.

When he breaks away, he is laughing again. Glenn has found them both, beneath the layers of fabric and leather, grinding his hips down to align them against Serge's abdomen.

"Moons," Serge groans; he throws his head back, hands still touching everything they can, catching in Glenn's mouth. Glenn nips, just enough, just enough to make Serge rumble out that noise again as he ruts them together. Serge won't last long - he's young and green, and maybe Glenn won't either. It's been a long time since it was anyone other than himself and his own memories, in the shadows of the barracks.

Glenn leans forward, trying to seek out Serge's mouth in time with their jerking, too-quick rhythm. His hand slides between them and finds Serge's cock, slick and hard, and he palms it roughly, tugging upward. This makes the other man moan again, fingers digging hard into Glenn's shoulders. He'll wear the bruises from this tomorrow, that is certain, and he's unsure if he feels as guilty about it as he probably should.

"Glenn," Serge says, and it's more air than voice, teetering on the edge of something. When he comes, eyes dark and open, pupils blown, Glenn knows he'll follow - not just now, not just here, but to the edge of the land and the next, to the other world that's shimmering just beyond the horizon. He'll follow this stranger if it means breaking his soul apart to do so.

Release is hard and quick, leaving his muscles trembling. The majority of it has ended up on Serge's stomach, sticky, and Glenn wipes what he can with a sweep of his palm against sweat-shined skin.

Feeling sentimental and vulnerable, exposed, Glenn presses a chaste kiss to Serge's mouth.

"You are alive," he mumbles there.

"Yeah," Serge agrees. Glenn can feel his smile, feel it curve up against his own lips, and Serge tugs on his hair, which has come completely free. "So are you."

Tomorrow there will be more battles, more blood on his sword, and more of their strange, uncharted journey, but tonight, they are brothers-in-arms, soldiers, and Glenn is content with that.

Perhaps Serge is right; maybe they _are_ both alive.


End file.
